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A day after a judge declared Leon Brown and Henry McCollum innocent and ordered their release after 30 years behind bars for a rape and murder they didn't commit, the half-brothers finally walked out of prisons in North Carolina yesterday. McCollum, 50 embraced his parents as soon as he was free. "I just thank God that I'm out of this place," he told reporters. "They took 30 years away from me for no reason, but I don't hate them. I don't hate them one bit," he added. McCollum, the state's longest-serving death row inmate, was so unfamiliar with the world outside prison that a cameraman had to help him get his seat belt on before he departed, the Los Angeles Times reports.

DNA evidence cleared both men, who were teenagers at the time of the 1983 killing. Brown, 46, was freed from a different prison yesterday and the pair embraced surrounded by cheering family members when they were reunited at a sister's home in Fayetteville, reports the Charlotte Observer. Both men, who are mentally disabled, will face huge challenges readjusting to the outside world, but may be in line for payments of up to $750,000 each. "A long time ago, I wanted to find me a good wife, I wanted to raise a family, I wanted to have my own business and everything," McCollum said in an interview last week. "I never got a chance to realize those dreams. Now I believe that God is going to bless me to get back out there." On his first day of freedom, he said he wanted to take a long bath—and "to go to sleep and wake up the next day and see all this is real." But although he is now free, he believes other innocent men are still on North Carolina's death row. "It hurt me the most to see the state take somebody's life, when they are committing murder their own self," he tells the AP. "But they don't see it that way." (Read more North Carolina stories.)

When I read that one of the brothers was not used to the every day outside world and the progress/advancements made while he was in prison, had to have help doing something as simple as clicking on a seat belt........I wanted to cry for him and his brother. They lost a very important part of their life thanks to some very ugly and evil people. I wish them the best. I am glad they are surrounded by a loving family to help them become acclimated to today's world.

wyle

Sep 4, 2014 10:13 AM CDT

$750,000 isn't enough for 30 years of wrongful imprisonment.

RogerMohajir

Sep 4, 2014 8:47 AM CDT

It is interesting to note that when Republicans in NC successfully fought to repeal the Racial Justice Act (which allowed those on death row to appeal their sentences -- but not their convictions -- if racial bias was involved in their sentencing), they used Mr. McCollum as their poster boy for why repeal was so important. They declared it unconscionable that this child rapist and murderer should escape execution on a technicality like racial bias in his sentencing. Gee, if only they'd managed to execute him before the DNA evidence was tested, all this embarrassment could have been avoided. It also should be noted that while NC is regressing politically in almost every way, we still have a state-funded innocence project that helps folks like McCollum and Brown reclaim some semblance of the lives that were stolen from them by a justice system prone to corruption, incompetence, and racial bias.